1st Edition
Towards a New Concept of the Political A Defence of Universalism and Difference
This book addresses the current crisis of democratic politics and its phase of ‘interregnum’ – in which the past finds it hard to die and the future finds it difficult to be born – by proposing a radical redefinition of the concept of the Political.
Drawing on the thoughts of Antonio Gramsci and Walter Benjamin among others, it explores the meaning of the lemma auctoritas – the opposition between authority and power – and offers a comparison of the Frankfurt School’s radical critique of power with Georges Bataille’s critique of political economy and consumerist productivism, demonstrating how the two ultimately converge. Based on an ontology of the present that is critical of ‘identity obsession’ and advances instead a universalism of difference, the author proposes a new understanding of politics founded not on ‘vertical’ domination but on a ‘horizontal’ recomposition of subjectivities, allowing interaction and acting-in-common between different forms of life.
This book will therefore appeal to scholars of social and political theory.
Prologue
1. Our Present as an Interregnum
2. The Other Scene: On Populist Syndrome: Delegitimzation as a Political Strategy
3. State of Exception: From Political Theology to History: Walter Benjamin's Messianism Without Waiting
4. Interlude: The Other Side of the Mirror: Sovereign Dépense – The Scandal of the Gift
5. Easts and Wests
6. Epilogue: The New World Scene
Afterword: Hayden White
Biography
Giacomo Marramao is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Roma Tre University, Italy. He is also a member of the Honor Committee of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris, France, and has been the recipient of numerous academic awards. His research explores theoretical and political philosophy, with particular emphasis on questions of power, hegemony, modernity, and time. He is the author of numerous books, several of which have been translated into various languages, including The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State (2012), Against Power: For an Overhaul of Critical Theory (2016), and The Bewitched World of Capital: Methods, Theory, Politics (2023).
